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By OSCAR HALPERT

Enterprise editor

August was a quiet month for sales at the brand new Axis Condominium development on 48th Avenue West and 212th Street Southwest.

In early August, the first 24 of 81 planned condos in what was formerly the 48 Park West apartments went on the market. So far, agents have received four offers, said Gina Lincoln, operations manager for developer Martinsen Tabert of Bothell.

The 630 to 900-square foot upscale condos in this gated community range in price from $179,000 to $248,000 — and that’s after the developer dropped the average price 10 percent to spur sales.

What Lincoln calls a slow start may not be unusual, especially since the housing market has cooled considerably because of the crisis in the mortgage industry. But reports back from realtors struck her as unusual anyway.

“We’re getting a lot of feedback from agents who say they’re not getting buyers because it’s associated with Mountlake Terrace,” she said.

Three years after celebrating its 50th anniversary, the city whose first inhabitants were soldiers returning from service in WWII is changing.

New residential developments have been springing up around town, the city’s code enforcement efforts have been beefed up and the city council this month approved a mixed-use downtown redevelopment plan called Town Center that will shape the city’s core over the next 20 years and beyond.

Yet in spite of the city’s best efforts, some residents who say they couldn’t imagine living anywhere else acknowledge that those real estate agents may be on to something: The city has an image problem.

“I hate to say that Mountlake Terrace has an image problem, but the truth is, Mountlake Terrace does have an image problem,” said Councilwoman Angela Amundson.

Lincoln acknowledged that the timing is poor for opening a new property but said even that doesn’t explain the lack of interest from real estate agents.

“We’ve had (agents) tell us quite a few times, ‘Well, that’s pretty daring of you to do in Mountlake Terrace,’” Lincoln said.

Christopher Haynes, a real estate agent for Windermere’s Shoreline office, said he’s heard those comments about the city many times.

“It seems to me that the perception is that Mountlake Terrace is cinder block homes,” he said. “A city of blockers; a lot of it, frankly, is perception,” he said.

What, exactly, is that perception?

“We’re hearing from a lot of agents who’ve lived in this area a long time, even people very familiar with the area,” Lincoln said. “They say historically, Mountlake Terrace is not a good place because of the crime — it’s on the wrong side of the freeway.”

Police Chief Scott Smith has heard such talk before.

Statistics don’t bear out the nay-sayers, however.

An analysis of the city, called Measuring Mountlake Terrace, found that the city compares well with other cities for safety.

Statistics taken from the 2004 annual report of the Association of Sheriff’s and Police Chiefs used in the study show that the number of property and violent crimes per 1,000 residents were well below average. The city in 2004 was slightly above average for the number of police officers per 1,000 residents when compared with 18 other cities.

Smith agrees that the city has a public image problem and says some of it was valid — years ago. He said in 2001, the city began to take a harder look at cleaning up its streets by cutting down on the number of junk cars and other forms of blight. Those efforts continue.

“We’re trying to change a culture in this city that’s been allowed to exist for 40 years,” he said. “That doesn’t change overnight, but the fact of the matter is, it’s changing.”

Mayor Jerry Smith said he’s also heard the sour talk about Mountlake Terrace and agrees the city has an image problem, at least in some respects. Still, he said, recent changes have made a difference and he points to the Town Center plan as an example of that change.

Judy Ryan, chair of the Mountlake Terrace Arts Advisory Commission, said the city “might be just a little bit behind the times.”

On the other hand, she said, people who don’t know the city “aren’t really doing their homework.”

If they’d take a closer look, Ryan said, they would see that the city has fantastic parks, a state-of-the-art aquatic center, the D &D Meats store that gets customers from far away, and a first-rate Mountlake Terrace High jazz band.

City Councilman Doug Wittinger, a resident since 1992, called the image issue a remnant of the city’s past.

“Things were quite bad some time ago,” he said. “I think we’ve done a lot of things to improve our image.”

Lincoln said recent visitors to Axis condiminums were mostly locals. They’ve said nothing but good things about the city,she said.

“It says a lot about the city,” she said. “They love to live in Mountlake Terrace. It’s just the people who live outside Mountlake Terrace who don’t know enough about it, I guess.”